Highways and Byways in Sussex Part 10

CHAPTER IX

AMBERLEY AND PARHAM

Suss.e.x fish--A straw-blown village--A painter of Suss.e.x light--A castle only in name--Parham's treasures--The Parham heronry--Storrington and the sagacious Jack Pudding--A Suss.e.x audience.

[Sidenote: SUSs.e.x FISH]

Five miles to the north of Arundel by road (over the Arun at Houghton's ancient bridge, restored by the bishops of Chichester in the fifteenth century), and a few minutes by rail, is Amberley, the fishing metropolis of Suss.e.x, where, every Sunday in the season, London anglers meet to drop their lines in friendly rivalry. "Amerley trout" (as Walton calls them) and Arundel mullet are the best of the Arun's treasures; and this reminds me of Fuller's tribute to Suss.e.x fish, which may well be quoted in this watery neighbourhood: "Now, as this County is eminent for both _Sea_ and _River-_fish, namely, an _Arundel Mullet_, a _Chichester Lobster_, a _Shelsey c.o.c.kle_, and an _Amerly Trout_; so _Suss.e.x_ aboundeth with more _Carpes_ than any other of this Nation. And though not so great as _Jovius_ reporteth to be found in the _Lurian Lake_ in _Italy_, weighing more than fifty pounds, yet those generally of great and goodly proportion. I need not adde, that _Physicians_ account the galls of _Carpes_, as also a stone in their heads, to be _Medicinable_; only I will observe that, because _Jews_ will not eat _Caviare_ made of _Sturgeon_ (because coming from a fish wanting Scales, and therefore forbidden in the _Levitical Law_); therefore the _Italians_ make greater profit of the _Spaun_ of _Carps_, whereof they make a _Red Caviare_, well pleasing the _Jews_ both in _Palate_ and _Conscience_. All I will adde of _Carps_ is this, that _Ramus_ himself doth not so much redound in _Dichotomies_ as they do; seeing no one bone is to be found in their body, which is not _forked_ or divided into two parts at the end thereof."

Amberley proper, as distinguished from Amberley of the anglers, is a mile from the station and is built on a ridge. The castle is the extreme western end of this ridge, the north side of which descends precipitously to the marshy plain that extends as far as Pulborough.

Standing on the castle one sees Pulborough church due north--height calling unto height. The castle is now a farm; indeed, all Amberley is a huge stockyard, smelling of straw and cattle. It is sheer Suss.e.x--chalky soil, whitewashed cottages, huge waggons; and one of the best of Suss.e.x painters, and, in his exquisite modest way, of all painters living, dwells in the heart of it--Edward Stott, who year after year shows London connoisseurs how the clear skin of the Suss.e.x boy takes the evening light; and how the Southdown sheep drink at hill ponds beneath a violet sky; and that there is nothing more beautiful under the stars than a whitewashed cottage just when the lamp is lit.

[Sidenote: AMBERLEY AND PARHAM]

Amberley has no right to lay claim to a castle, for the old ruins are not truly, as they seem, the remains of a castellated stronghold, but of a crenellated mansion. John Langton, Bishop of Chichester in the fourteenth century, was the first builder. Previously the Church lands here had been held very jealously, and in 1200 we find Bishop Gilbert de Leofard twice excommunicating, and as often absolving, the Earl of Arundel for poaching (as he termed it) in Houghton Forest. The Church lost Amberley in the sixteenth century. William Rede, who succeeded Langton to both house and see, wishing to feel secure in his home, craved permission to dig a moat around it and to render it both hostile and defensive. Hence its lion-like mien; but it has known no warfare, and the castle's mouldering walls now give what a.s.sistance they can in harbouring live stock. Twentieth-century sheds lean against fourteenth-century masonry; f.a.ggots are stored in the moat; lawn tennis is played in the courtyard; and black pigeons peep from the slits cut for arquebusiers.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Amberley Castle._]

Amberley Castle only once intrudes itself in history: Charles II., during his flight in 1651, spent a night there under the protection of Sir John Briscoe, as we saw in Chapter III.

In winter, if you ask an Amberley man where he dwells, he says, "Amberley, G.o.d help us." In summer he says, "Amberley--where _would_ you live?"

From Amberley to Parham one keeps upon the narrow ridge for a mile or so, branching off then to the left. Parham's advance guard is seen all the way--a clump of fir trees, indicating that the soil there changes to sand.

[Sidenote: A n.o.bLE DAME]

For two possessions is Parham noted: a heronry in the park, and in the house a copy of Montaigne with Shakespeare's autograph in it. The house, a spreading Tudor mansion, is the seat of Lord Zouche, a descendant of the traveller, Robert Curzon, who wrote _The Monasteries of the Levant_, that long, leisurely, and fascinating narrative of travel. In addition to Montaigne, it enshrines a priceless collection of armour, of incunabula and Eastern MSS. Among the pictures are full lengths of Sir Philip Sidney and Lady Sidney, and that Penelope D'Arcy--one of Mr.

Hardy's "n.o.ble Dames"--who promised to marry three suitors in turn and did so. We see her again at Firle Place.

A hiding hole for priests and other refugees is in the long gallery, access to it being gained through a window seat. There was hidden Charles Paget after the Babington conspiracy.

[Sidenote: THE PARHAM HERONS]

Parham Park has deer and a lake and an enchanted forest of sombre trees.

On the highest ground in this forest is the clump of firs in which the famous herons build. The most interesting time to visit the heronry is in the breeding season, for then one sees the lank birds continually homing from the Amberley Wild Brooks with fishes in their bills and long legs streaming behind. The noise is tremendous, beyond all rookeries.

Mr. Knox's _Ornithological Rambles_, from which I have already quoted freely, has this pa.s.sage: "The herons at Parham a.s.semble early in February, and then set about repairing their nests, but the trees are never entirely deserted during the winter months; a few birds, probably some of the more backward of the preceding season, roosting among their boughs every night. They commence laying early in March, and the greater part of the young birds are hatched during the early days of April.

About the end of May they may be seen to flap out of their nests to the adjacent boughs, and bask for hours in the warm sunshine; but although now comparatively quiet during the day, they become clamorous for food as the evening approaches, and indeed for a long time appear to be more difficult to wean, and less able to shift for themselves, than most birds of a similar age. They may be observed, as late as August, still on the trees, screaming for food, and occasionally fed by their parents, who forage for them a.s.siduously; indeed, these exertions, so far from being relaxed after the setting of the sun, appear to be redoubled during the night; for I have frequently disturbed herons when riding by moonlight among the low grounds near the river, where I have seldom seen them during the day, and several cottagers in the neighbourhood of Parham have a.s.sured me that their shrill cry may be heard at all hours of the night, during the summer season, as they fly to and fro overhead, on their pa.s.sage between the heronry and the open country.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Amberley Castle, entrance to Churchyard._]

[Sidenote: MANY MIGRATIONS]

"The history or genealogy of the progenitors of this colony is remarkable. They were originally brought from Coity Castle, in Wales, by Lord Leicester's steward, in James the First's time, to Penshurst, in Kent, the seat of Lord de Lisle, where their descendants continued for more than two hundred years; from thence they migrated to Michelgrove, about seventy miles from Penshurst and eight from Parham; here they remained for nearly twenty years, until the proprietor of the estate disposed of it to the late Duke of Norfolk, who, having purchased it, not as a residence, but with the view of increasing the local property in the neighbourhood of Arundel, pulled down the house, and felled one or two of the trees on which the herons had constructed their nests. The migration commenced immediately, but appears to have been gradual; for three seasons elapsed before all the members of the heronry had found their way over the Downs to their new quarters in the fir-woods of Parham. This occurred about seventeen years ago [written c. 1848]."

Suss.e.x, says Mr. Borrer, author of _The Birds of Suss.e.x_, has two other large heronries--at Windmill Hill Place, near Hailsham, and Brede, near Winchelsea--and some smaller ones, one being at Molecomb, above Goodwood.

Betsy's Oak in Parham Park is said to be so called because Queen Elizabeth sat beneath it. But another and more probable legend calls it Bates's Oak, after Bates, an archer at Agincourt in the retinue of the Earl of Arundel (and in _Henry V._). Good Queen Bess, however, dined in the hall of Parham House in 1592. At Northiam, in East Suss.e.x, we shall come (not to be utterly baulked) to a tree under which she truly did sit and dine too.

[Sidenote: JACK PUDDING'S WISDOM]

Beyond Parham, less than two miles to the east, is Storrington, a quiet Suss.e.x village far from the rail and the noise of the world, with the Downs within hail, and fine spa.r.s.ely-inhabited country between them and it to wander in. The church is largely modern. I find the following sententious paragraph in the county paper for 1792:--"This is an age of _Sights_ and _polite entertainment_ in the country as well as in the city.--The little town of _Storrington_ has lately been visited by a _Company of Comedians_,--_a Mountebank Doctor_,--and a _Puppet Show_.

One day the Doctor's _Jack Pudding_ finding the shillings come in but slowly, exclaimed to his Master, 'Gad, Sir, it is not worth _our_ while to stay here any longer, _players_ have got all the _gold_, _we_ all the _silver_, and _Punch_ all the _copper_, so, like sagacious locusts, let us migrate from the place we helped to impoverish."

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Amberley Church._]

[Sidenote: A TRAVELLING CIRCUS]

[Sidenote: A TIME-HONOURED JOKE]

This reminds me that I saw recently at Petworth, whither we are now moving, a travelling circus whose programme included a comic interlude that cannot have received the slightest modification since it was first planned, perhaps hundreds of years ago. It was sheer essential elemental horse-play straight from Bartholomew Fair, and the audience received it with rapture that was vouchsafed to nothing else. The story would be too long to tell; but briefly, it was a dumb show representation of the visit of a guest (the clown) to a wife, unknown to her husband. The scenery consisted of a table, a large chest, a heap of straw and a huge barrel. The fun consisted in the clown, armed with a bladder on a string, hiding in the barrel, from which he would spring up and deliver a sounding drub upon the head of whatever other character--husband or policeman--might be pa.s.sing, to their complete perplexity. They were, of course, incapable of learning anything from experience. At other times he hid himself or others in the straw, in the chest, or under the table.

When, in a country district such as this, one hears the laughter that greets so venerable a piece of pantomime, one is surprised that circus owners think it worth while to secure novelties at all. The primitive taste of West Suss.e.x, at any rate, cannot require them.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Pulborough Church._]

CHAPTER X

PETWORTH

Pulborough and its past--Stopham--Fittleworth--The natural advantages of the Swan--Petworth's feudal air--An historical digression naming many Percies--The third Earl of Egremont--The Petworth pictures--Petworth Park--Cobbett's opinion--The vicissitudes of the Petworth ravens--Tillington's use to business men--A charming epitaph--Noah Mann of the Hambledon Club.

Petworth is not on the direct road to Horsham, which is our next centre, but it is easily gained from Arundel by rail (changing at Pulborough), or by road through Bury, Fittleworth, and Egdean.

[Sidenote: AN ANCIENT FORTRESS]

Pulborough is now nothing: once it was a Gibraltar, guarding Stane Street for Rome. The fort was on a mound west of the railway, corresponding with the church mound on the east. Here probably was a catapulta and certainly a vigilant garrison. Pulborough has no invader now but the floods, which every winter transform the green waste at her feet into a silver sea, of which Pulborough is the northern sh.o.r.e and Amberley the southern. The Dutch _polder_ are not flatter or greener than are these intervening meadows. The village stands high and dry above the water level, extended in long line quite like a seaside town.

Excursionists come too, as to a watering place, but they bring rods and creels and return at night with fish for the pan.

Between Pulborough and Petworth lie Stopham and Fittleworth, both on the Rother, which joins the Arun a little to the west of Pulborough. Stopham has the most beautiful bridge in Suss.e.x, dating from the fourteenth century, and a little church filled with memorials of the Bartelott family. One of Stopham's rectors was Thomas Newcombe, a descendant of the author of _The Faerie Queene_, the friend of the author of _Night Thoughts_, and the author himself of a formidable poem in twelve books, after Milton, called _The Last Judgment_.

Fittleworth has of late become an artists' Mecca, partly because of its pretty woods and quaint architecture, and partly because of the warm welcome that is offered by the "Swan," which is probably the most ingeniously placed inn in the world. Approaching it from the north it seems to be the end of all things; the miles of road that one has travelled apparently have been leading nowhere but to the "Swan."

Runaway horses or unsettled chauffeurs must project their pa.s.sengers literally into the open door. Coming from the south, one finds that the road narrows by this inn almost to a lane, and the "Swan's" hospitable sign, barring the way, exerts such a spell that to enter is a far simpler matter than to pa.s.s.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _At Pulborough._]

[Sidenote: AN IRRESISTIBLE INN]

The "Swan" is a venerable and rambling building, stretching itself lazily with outspread arms; one of those inns (long may they be preserved from the rebuilders!) in which one stumbles up or down into every room, and where eggs and bacon have an appropriateness that make them a more desirable food than ambrosia. The little parlour is wainscoted with the votive paintings--a village Diploma Gallery--of artists who have made the "Swan" their home.

Fittleworth has a dual existence. In the south it is riparian and low, much given to anglers and visitors. In the north it is high and sandy, with clumps of firs, living its own life and spreading gorse-covered commons at the feet of the walker. Between its southern border and Bignor Park is a superb common of sand and heather, an inland paradise for children.

Petworth station and Petworth town are far from being the same thing, and there are few more fatiguing miles than that which separates them. A 'bus, it is true, plies between, but it is one of those long, close prisons with windows that annihilate thought by their shattering unfixedness. Petworth's spire is before one all the way, Petworth itself cl.u.s.tering on the side of the hill, a little town with several streets rather than a great village all on one artery. I say several streets, but this is dead in the face of tradition, which has a joke to the effect that a long timber waggon once entered Petworth's single, circular street, and has never yet succeeded in emerging. I certainly met it.